International Journal of English and Studies (IJOES)

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Reclaiming the Elusive Shadaj: Female Vocalists’ Search for a Room in the World of Hindustani Classical Music ______Rebanta Gupta Postgraduate Student, Department of English, Presidency University (Kolkata) ______Abstract: Keywords: Hindustani Classical Music, The paper tries to discuss the ingenious khayal, ghazal, tradition, Virginia Woolf, artistic imprints left by the two premier patriarchy. female Hindustani Classical vocalists- Begum Akhtar and Kishori Amonkar, who Introduction: tried to create an ontological space of their In this world dominated by own in the phallocentric musical discourse. patriarchal institutions, females have almost The paper utilizes the concept of an always occupied a secondary position; their alternative literary space for females sagas, voices, and achievements have been expounded by Virginia Woolf in her essay reduced to mere footnotes on the margins of A Room of One’s Own (1929), to analyze history written with the phallic stylus. the efforts made by these two songstresses Female presence in the arts and cultural to create a subjective space of their own in discourses has been considered pernicious, the world of Hindustani Classical Music. as if they are a redundant “excess” that The musical techniques and politics used by plagues the system. Females have always Akhtaribabi and Amonkar have been tried to reclaim their lost homes within discussed to show their struggle against the these discursive systems; feminist musical tradition, which is like an ever- movements have shaken the planet, under observant paternal figure, and they tried to the leadership of eminent female activists, deviate from the tradition by paradoxically from Mary Wollstonecraft to Simone de acknowledging its traces in their renditions. Beauvoir. But the struggle continues, as Besides using Woolf’s ideas, the essay also women are continuously trying to combat tries to implement Hélène Cixous’ idea of patriarchal hegemony, and establish a the écriture féminine, to underscore the metaphorical room of their own, that female vocalists’ search for a feminine resembles the elusive shadaj or the fleeting musical language, which is divorced from and sequestered tonic of the Hindustani patriarchal domination. Therefore, the Classical Raga Marwa. This paper tries to paper uses literary tropes to understand explore the ingenious imprints left by two musical mechanisms and politics of eminent female vocalists of Hindustani subjectivity. Classical Music, Begum Akhtar and

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Kishori Amonkar, who have successfully own and control property, their financial established their identity in a patriarchal position remained deplorable, as they had musical atmosphere, through the lens of been regarded as objects of child-bearing Virginia Woolf’s influential feminist essay and ignorance; they were the quintessential A Room of One’s Own (1929). Like models of inferiority who inflated Virginia’s quest for a room in the masculine superiority. She, therefore, phallocentric literary space, Akhtaribai and advances her thesis, “All I could do was to Amonkar have also searched for an offer you an opinion upon one minor point- ontological space of their own in the a woman must have money and a room of musical ecosystem. her own if she is to write fiction” (Woolf 4). The names of the four Marys become Virginia’s Room: An Exposition: universal signifiers for the feminine Two lectures by the celebrated condition, and Woolf reflects on the modernist writer Virginia Woolf, delivered misogynistic, patriarchal representations of at the University of Cambridge’s Newnham women. The absence of notable female College and the Girton College in October writers in the fecund literary climate of the 1928 constitute the kernel of A Room of Elizabethan Period, and the scarcity of One’s Own. This text argues for the information regarding the middle-class establishment of a literal as well as a women of that epoch, instigate her to figurative space for the female writers in a construct the hypothetical character of literary world colonized by men. Woolf Judith Shakespeare, who is the antithesis of creates her fictional alter-ego- “Call me the literary giant William Shakespeare, and Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael she narrates her fictional heart-wrenching or by any name you please” (Woolf 5), to saga. Judith had literary potential, which address the question of women writing was prevented from blossoming by the fiction. She analyzes women’s secondary male establishment. position in society, how men’s colleges have always invited wealthy sponsors, Aphra Behn, however, had been while women’s colleges struggled to raise able to decolonize her mind from the funds; how the impoverished females are patriarchal specter. As a widowed middle- unable to leave behind wealth for their class woman trying to make ends meet, she daughters, since entrepreneurship, which is could produce impeccable literary works. required for amassing wealth, is at Woolf discusses the women novelists’ rise loggerheads with the child-rearing duty. in the nineteenth century; George Eliot, Despite the Married Women’s Property Act Emily and Charlotte Brontë, and Jane of 1882, which granted married women to Austen used the novel, a new literary form,

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RESEARCH ARTICLE to express themselves and their subjective to the Western modal melodic system). This utterances. Woolf aspires to rekindle the vibrant musical tradition (which manifests Judith resting inside all women, by itself in different classical forms like khayal providing women with a space crafted by and dhrupad, and semi-classical forms like economic independence and privacy- thumri, dadra, chaiti, kajri, and tappa) “For Woolf, the claims its origin in the ancient scriptures or professional woman writer was the the shastras, and its basic principles were one who could be independent of earmarked in treatises like Bharata’s men, who earned her keep by means Natyashastra (second-third century BCE) other than menial labor or being a and Dattila’s Dattilam (around third-fourth dependent wife. The literary century BCE). In a religious and spiritually profession for a woman has come to minded country like India, the female deity represent in our current formation of Saraswati is believed to have been the canon an escape from social presiding over the faculties of knowledge, roles and norms, whether the escape art, wisdom, and especially music. Thus, is complete, as in the case of Behn, Indian music has a feminine Symbolic or partial, in the simple attainment Other governing its dynamics. She is the of a quiet room” (Ezell 586). consort of Lord Brahma, “the celestial Woolf’s thesis about the literary room for creative symphony when Brahma created women would be used as a trope in the the universe” (Wikipedia). With a lute-like following sections, to discuss the search for instrument veena, she sits on her a space for the females in the world of magnificent lotus bed, and the music Hindustani Classical Music. practitioners pay homage to her occasionally. However, despite this Women and Hindustani Classical Music: feminine antecedent, Indian musical Hindustani Classical Music or tradition has been overtly phallocentric, as Shastriya Sangeet is the art music prevalent innumerable constraints have been imposed in the Northern parts of India, in the states upon women regarding learning and adorning the Indo-Gangetic Valley, like performance of classical music. One Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Madhya example can be cited in this regard; Ustad Pradesh, etc. This eclectic musical tradition, Bande Ali Khan, the celebrated beenkar which is distinct from its southern (player of lute-like instrument veena) of the counterpart, Carnatic Classical Music, dates prolific Kirana Gharana in the nineteenth back to the twelfth century BCE, and it century, trained his two daughters in revolves around the axis called the “Raga” playing the rudra veena, and they had been (a melodic musical mode, somewhat similar married off to two beenkars- Ustad

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Zakiruddin Khan and Ustad Allabande childbearing from finer skills of influencing Khan, so that they could perform alongside outcomes of significance” (Sengupta 124). their illustrious husbands. But the In ancient India, the courtesans (the prejudiced husbands forbade their wives to devadasis and the kothewalis) were freed touch the instrument, as the very notion of from domestic regulations; they were the women hailing from a respectable Muslim nodes of pleasure and cultural refinement, family performing music was obnoxious; who attracted the wealthy citizens. They “frustrated at this restriction, the women instructed the native Indian rulers’ sons in took the opportunity to play while husbands matters of culture and etiquette. They were absent. On returning and discovering embodied sublimity, elegance, impeccable their disobedience, the husbands forbade manners, and graciousness, as Mekhala them forever to touch the instruments. Their Sengupta observes, wives in retaliation cursed the family, “Courtesans, freed from saying that one-day; a woman would save it domestic conventions, were from destruction” (Rao 5). This incident unarguably the first specialists in the depicts women as threats to the art of winning friends and phallocentric musical discourse; they have influencing people. It was not just been represented as non-musical. Despite charm, but entertainment and some amount of liberal attitude shown persuasion. They had an opportunity towards women in the past, their position to train in the literary and the was perhaps redefined to separate them performing arts (but in a from the “lowly” dharhis and the mirasis, commercial way), and to be who were associated with the courtesan independent and free-thinking. They culture. applied these principles to all Nearly two thousand years occupy matters of the state and diplomacy, the temporal gulf between Amrapali (the with considerable impact” (125). celebrated royal courtesan of Vaishali in Both the Hindus and the Muslims accepted 500 BCE) and Gauhar Jaan (one of the first them; they later shined as musical Indian musicians to record her songs on virtuosos, eminent danseuses, and erudite seventy-eight rpm shellac records), and scholars. It would not be outrageous to they have witnessed a reconfiguration in the conclude, that their elevated stature attitude towards the courtesans, who were challenged the patriarchal dominance. proficient in singing and dancing. They Musical forms like thumri and ghazal were the predecessors of the professional germinated from these artists, who had female entertainers, who marked the point mastered the sixty-four arts, described in of “separation of domesticity and Vatsyayana’s Kamasutra. But the situation

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RESEARCH ARTICLE hit the reverse gear, with the 1856 British simultaneously created their musical annexation of the Kingdom of Awadh, edifices on the remains of that tradition. which was the cultural hotspot of North Begum Akhtar: India, and home to innumerable courtesans. Begum Akhtar or Akhtaribai The decline of the royal patronage, along Faizabadi was one of the most prominent with the imposition of the Contagious exponents of Hindustani semi-classical Diseases Act and heavy penalties because music of the twentieth century. This prolific of the courtesan’s alleged involvement in songstress, dubbed Mallika-e-Ghazal the Great Revolt of 1857, transformed the (Queen of Ghazal), remembered for her esteemed institution into a system of mellifluous renditions of ghazal, thumri, prostitution. and dadra, was the uncrowned musical The following sections will try to queen of Lucknow. Her triumphant explore the attempts made by the two presence under court patronage, in films, prominent female classical vocalists of the theatre, and radio, as the national icon of twentieth century-Begum Akhtar and courtly culture, perhaps made the Kishori Amonkar, to sculpt a space of their celebrated poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz utter, own and reinstate the lost feminine glory in “Her personal charm, her great generosity the phallocentric musical discourse. They of heart and sympathy for good causes tried to create their own musical and made her acquaintance as rewarding as her subjective idioms from the inside of the art” (qtd. in Qureshi 97). robust tradition, which is like an ever- Born to a poor professional singer observant paternal figure; they tried to Mushtari in Faizabad, in a matrilineal transgress its limits, yet paradoxically household, Begum Akhtar’s musical acknowledged its traces in their works. training began under the tutelage of Imdad Following Harold Bloom’s thesis Khan, Ghulam Muhammad Khan, and Ata expounded in The Anxiety of Influence, it Muhammad Khan. Her sonorous voice and can be said, their idioms germinated from incredible capacity to absorb music were their musical predecessors, yet they fine-tuned by the training pattern designed suffered from an Oedipal tension with the for the male classical singers. Her career tradition. To achieve their space, they blossomed from the 1930s; her seventy- effaced the paternal specter of the past, and eight rpm recordings gained massive created their own musical registers, through popularity and her name became a the dual processes of entombment and household word, “which was reinforced by enshrinement. They entombed the her signature at the end of the three-minute radioactive influences of the tradition, and records” (Qureshi 113). Invitations from the royal courts, a brief stint in acting at the

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Bombay film industry, and the popularity style of light music” (Qureshi 120). Poetry, of her records established her as a highly which was central to her music, underwent sought-after artist amid Lucknow’s courtly the process of resignification through her culture. She bought a house in a prosperous ghazal performances, after it had neighbourhood and named it “Villa degenerated because of the demise of the Akhtar.” Following Woolf’s thesis, this feudal culture. Her musical politics made could be described as her moment of her gain access to the cultural sphere of the acquiring a room of her own, which was elite urban bourgeois class. From being a governed by her subjectivity and economic lowly tawaif, she rose to become the independence. This might have prompted national treasure, posthumously receiving her to invert the established conventions, the Padma Vibhushan award from the and suggest marriage to Ishtiaq Abbasi, a Government of India. Lucknow barrister. However, she used her Her disciples addressed her as independence to enter the patriarchal “Ammi” (“Mother”), which projected her discourse of marriage, which halted her as a loving maternal figure than a master; performances and singing; her habits were she developed “a relationship of nurturing also curtailed and she was put on the radar and kinship solidarity rather than of of her strict sister-in-law. Though her desire dominance accepting submission” (Qureshi to be the wife of his beloved was stated as 123). The profession of a music teacher had the motive behind her marriage, the threat been largely phallocentric; though gender- of a ban on professional women singers neutral term likes guruexists, she eschewed might have prompted her to select this such nomenclatures and estranged herself suicidal path. After his mother’s death, the from the implied status of such addresses. shattered Mr. Abbasi allowed Akhtaribai to She treated her disciples, like Shanti relaunch her performative career. Hiranand and Rita Ganguly, as daughters, Her radical approach elevated the and never demanded a cent. As Regula B. status of ghazal, and consolidated its place Qureshi writes, in the rubric of classical music. Her “One can see in Begum rigorous training and flexibility to respond Akhtar's circle of female students to different patterns of listeners proved to and admirers an alternative nucleus be instrumental: “This contextual of mutual support in which power sensitivity served her to develop a relationships are absent. Invoked by classicized adaptation of the intense, yet kin terms of address, the kinship volatile emotionality of the intimate salon model of interaction between a performance, now distilled into a self- mother and her daughters suggests contained musical enactment: a concert solidarity and intimacy, informality

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and mutual care that are practiced in different” (Jaffer). She remains a colossus, traditional households where who dared to design her own space in the women are essentially autonomous patriarchal musical discourse. in managing and inhabiting the Kishori Amonkar: “domestic sphere” ” (123). The prima donna of Hindustani Her birth in a matrilineal family, where a Classical Music, Kishori Amonkar will girl is identified by her mother’s name always be remembered for her (Mushtari was known as Bada Sahib or unconventional and rebellious approach to “His Highness”), triggered spontaneous the khayal genre. With a musical repertoire inter subjective relationships that allowed charged with contradictions and self-expression in verbal and musical ambivalence, she was constantly trying to domains, and her effervescent, expressive, bridge the gulf between monolithic tradition romantic, and spontaneous singing style and classicism on the one hand (for which reflects this fact; it marked a departure from she had immense respect), and her the subdued and less expressive feminine subjectivity and originality on the other. style prevalent during her time. Her voice Her performances were the eruptions of her continues to live amid her disciples, like robust subjectivity in the larger discourse of Hiranand and Ganguly, who cultivate their the shastriya tradition, which was guru’s intricate and traditional repertoire. essentially masculine and threatened to She became a model for numerous women curtail subjectivity. Musicologist Mohan performers, most notably Shobha Gurtu, Nadkarni describes Amonkar, along with who tried to recreate Akhtaribai’s Kumar Gandharva, as the singer, “who expressive performance style. Pakistani pioneered the avant garde movement in female vocalists like Iqbal Bano and Farida Hindustani Classical Music” (Vajpeyi). The Khanum have reinterpreted her ghazals, disciple of her mother Moghubai Kurdikar thereby creating a female musicians’ (the premier vocalist of the Jaipur-Atrauli sorority that transgresses the international Gharana established by the phenomenal boundaries. She would not have Alladiya Khan), Kishori’s marriage to her comprehended the meaning of the term husband Ravindra Amonkar, could not “feminist,” historian Salim Kidwai deter her from pursuing a vibrant musical observes:“He suspects that Begum Akhtar career, as her mother raised her two sons. would have broken into helpless giggles Her music could be described as and thought it a great joke to be called a bordering on the “unexpected”; she would feminist, despite the fact that she had so play with improbability and titillate the smartly stepped away from the crippling audience to move beyond the territory of circumstances of her birth and daredto be expectations. A romanticist in her approach,

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RESEARCH ARTICLE the eclectic Amonkar reconfigured her composition Eri Ali Piya Bina, and singing style by borrowing elements from translates the tritaal (sixteen beats) pattern other gharanas, thereby revolutionizing the into sitarkhani taal (sixteen beats with original Jaipur- Atrauli approach. By different metrical structure from that departing from her tradition, she oftritaal), that led to the creation of a new incorporated alapchari (long wordless or architecture of sounds, which, despite being rhythmless exposition of a raga) into her sublime, was considered to be a performance, and relaxed the knot blasphemous experiment by the combining note and rhythm, so that her traditionalists. Musicologist Kumar Prasad rendition assumed a jelly-like structure, Mukherjee observes, floating on the superstructure of rhythm. She tried to reestablish the attention “She is an enigma to me. towards the verbal meaning of the When I listened to her for the first compositions, which was grossly neglected time nearly twenty years ago at the by other illustrious vocalists. She house of Jagdish Goenka, I had told emphasized the semantic value of the one of my non-Bengali friends, musical notes; with her focus on the “pure ‘Where has she been all my life?’ I language of notes,” she attempted to have heard her wonderful renditions transcend the mere musical technicalities. of Bhupali, Bhoop Nat, and As a fierce critic of the constraints Shuddha Nat...but after listening to enshrined in the gharana system, she said, her renditions of Khem Kalyan, “There is nothing called a gharana. There Bageshree, etc., I wondered whether is only music. It has been bound in these I had received erroneous training in gharanas and that is like dividing music these ragas all my life.” (Mukherjee into specific castes. One should not teach 65, translation mine). the students the limits of this art. There are none” (Wikipedia). As a temperamental and This enigmatic quality of Amonkar can be spiritual singer, she loathed genuflecting interpreted as the manifestation of her before the influential musical superstars or musical politics; through her ambivalent the capitalist forces, and boldly declared attitude towards tradition, which that she performed not for the sake of encompassed both innovation and money, but for communicating with the allegiance to the past, she tried to create her transcendental signified. Her iconoclastic own space in the phallocentric musical turn is observable in her rendition of the discourse: “Her music encompassed a Raga Yaman, where she redesigns the complexity of emotions—separation, rhythmic structure of the famous longing, waiting, eagerness, anxiety and

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RESEARCH ARTICLE tension. But beyond all this, there was a feminine position in the signifying system, yearning, irrepressible and none too through the use of literary techniques like concealed, to identity with nature. metaphors and stream-of-consciousness. Amonkar’s music reached out to the The musical domain is similarly plagued primeval elements of nature: nature giving with phallocentric powers, and this paper birth, generating a million different things” has tried to highlight the eruption of female (Vajpayi). She wanted to explore the voices and the construction of their musical feminine side of the arts and nature, an idiosyncrasies, that inaugurated a separate endeavor that had been suppressed by the feminine domain in Hindustani Classical patriarchal approach to music. Her music Music. This domain, epitomizing these reeked of sheer loneliness amid a crowd. female vocalists’ attempts to spearhead a Her politics of subjectivity is observable in reverse colonization of the musical her rendition of the Raga Bhoop, Sahela Re signifying system and discourse, can be Aa Mil Gaayein, where she replaces the identified as musique féminine, or raga’s masculine regality with a feminine “women’s music.” Derrida’s formulation of lonesomeness, that attempts to create a the nexus between the paternal figure and spiritual nexus with the almighty, by logos (speech, word, or reason) is important disregarding the earthly constraints. in this context, Conclusion: “…Logos also requires the The discourse of language has attendance and presence of its always been colonized by patriarchy; father. Without the father (the masculine notions have gained the upper paternal presence), as Socrates and hand in the construction of meaning, where Derrida both note, logos would women have existed as floating signifiers. share the features of writing (a son, Jacques Derrida defines this phenomenon anorphan, without being able to as phallologocentrism, “‘the system of defend himself or attend to his own metaphysical oppositions’ predominant in needs). Such an orphan-son is not Western philosophy that has until recently however only regarded with pity; he been written by men” (Addicott). Women’s is also accused for achieving absence in the signifying system prompted emancipation and self-sufficiency” the French feminist and literary theorist (de Ville 8). Hélène Cixous to formulate écriture If vocal music could be interpreted as a féminine(in her essay “The Laugh of the form of non-verbal speech, i.e-logos, or a Medusa”)- a literary writing, that departs form of speech that navigates the gap from the traditional phallocentric writing between the concrete and the abstract, it can discourse. It attempts to reorient the be said, that the musique féminine attempts

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RESEARCH ARTICLE to expunge this pernicious paternal Woolf. The female musicians are writing presence, and it paradoxically brings music their own sagas with their vocal closer to writing, which, in Derridean gynostyluses or “voice pens”. nomenclature, is a pharmakon (a word signifying the interplay of “poison” and Reference “potion”). It is simultaneously threatening Andrade, Claudia Braga. “Derrida’s the patriarchal discourse, yet sculpting a Writing: Notes on the Freudian feminine musical space. The French critical Model of Language.”Psicologia USP. theorists portray the feminine as the one Instituto De Psicologia, 4 Apr. 2015. evading representation in the patriarchal Web. 03 Mar. 2021. symbolic structure, and remaining as an “excess.” But, these female vocalists have De Ville, Jacques. “Revisiting Plato's subverted this claim by moving from the Pharmacy.”International Journal for position of the signified to the signifier. In the Semiotics of Law 23.3 (2010): the Derridean universe, speech already is 315-38. Print. arche-writing, a language that precedes Ezell, Margaret J.M. “The Myth of Judith both speech and writing: “Writing refers Shakespeare: Creating the Canon of not only to inscription, but to the possibility Women's Literature.”New Literary of inscription. In this sense, writing is not a History 21.3 (1990): 579-92. JSTOR. graphical derivation, a result from speech, Web. 25 Feb. 2021. but the possibility of articulation between Jaffer, Mehru. “Fearless Feminist of speech and writing” (Andrade). Music, a Thumri.”Business Line. The Hindu non-verbal mode of communication with BusinessLine, 17 Apr. 2014. Web. 26 larger semantic bandwidth, that transcends Feb. 2021. linguistic barriers, refers to that possibility “Kishori Amonkar.”Wikipedia: The Free of articulation between speech and writing. Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Vocal music thus belongs to that rubric of Foundation, 24 Jan. 2021. Web. 25 arche-writing. By restructuring their Feb. 2021. approach to classical vocal, and by designing a new feminist musical discourse, Mukherjee, Kumar Prasad. Kudrat Begum Akhtar and Kishori Amonkar have Raṅ gibiraṅ gī . Kolkata: Ananda, introduced a musical écriture fémininein 1996. Print. Hindustani Classical Music. This Qureshi, Regula Burckhardt. “In Search of gynocentric domain is comparable to that Begum Akhtar: Patriarchy, Poetry, elusive tonic of Raga Marwa, that shadowy and Twentieth-Century Indian room of females envisioned by Virginia Music.”The World of Music 43.1 ISSN: 2581-8333 Copyright © 2021 SP Publications Page 196

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(2001): 97-137. JSTOR. Web. 25 Feb. Sengupta, Mekhala. “Courtesan Culture of 2021. India: The Transition from the Devdasi Rao, Gundu H.R. “Women on the Centre to the Tawaif or Boijee.”India Stage.” Women in Indian Music. International Centre Quarterly 41.1 Proc. of Women in Indian Music, (2014): 124-40. JSTOR. Web. 25 Feb. School of Music, University of 2021. Minnesota, Minnesota. Researchgate, Vajpeyi, Ashok. “Remembering 11 Dec. 2006. Web. 25 Feb. 2021. Amonkar.”The Hindu. The Hindu, 08 Apr. 2017. Web. 25 Feb. 2021. “Saraswati.”Wikipedia: The Free Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. Encyclopaedia. Wikimedia London: Penguin, 2019. Print. Foundation, 22 Feb. 2021. Web. 25 Feb. 2021.